Political revolt could be rerouted into mere crime by the penal apparatus

Evidence

Lacenaire is the typical ‘delinquent’. But he brought with him, at least potentially, a horizon of illegalities that had, until quite recently, represented a threat: this ruined petty bourgeois, of good education, would, a generation earlier, have been a revolutionary, a Jacobin, a regicide; had he been a contemporary of Robespierre, his rejection of the law would have taken a directly political form. Born in 1800, at more or less the same time as Stendhal’s Julien Sorel, his character bears the trace of these possibilities; but they took the form of theft, murder and denunciation. All these potentialities became a delinquency of no great moment: in this sense, Lacenaire is a reassuring character. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 435

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the panopticon thesis: the penal apparatus converts political illegality into apolitical delinquency, a mechanism parallel to telescreen internalization. — connects to: The spectacle’s crowd could invert terror into revolt against the punitive power — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 115; Society transforms chosen crime into imposed, inherent vice; Urban spectacle serves as a political weapon for both control and revolt. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 551 (+3 more)

Related

• Society transforms chosen crime into imposed, inherent vice (similarity 0.90)

Broader Connections

• The spectacle’s crowd could invert terror into revolt against the punitive power #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 115